


A window to the world

by FiveRaysOfSun



Category: NU'EST
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, One Shot, Terminal Illnesses, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 01:34:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14801840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiveRaysOfSun/pseuds/FiveRaysOfSun
Summary: Dongho has fallen in love with a boy who has long died by reading the pages of the diary he left behind.





	A window to the world

**Author's Note:**

> bad post op

It had been a long journey from Seoul to back home where his parents house was. It’s not like Dongho hated seeing his parents, but these days had been so busy for him, he did not see the reason to take time off to visit for over a week, when he could just better yet call instead.

He could never say no to the constant nagging, and his mother was right, the air outside of the capital city was good for him. The reason his arrival was meant to be so urgent, was that his parents desperately wanted for him to meet their new neighbors, clearly it sounded ridiculous to the adult Dongho. 

He figured that they did it simply just so they could boast and show off their handsome son, who has just graduated from a good university, to the new family moving in next doors. Either way, Dongho wasn’t quite too pleased to be swung out of his daily rhythm to fly across the country for something as stupid as this.

Upon arrival, Dongho hadn’t even gotten out of the cab in the drive way, before he already picked up the familiar yell of his mother demanding him to help with chores. Real welcoming, Dongho thought, he felt at home already.

The people moving in next doors looked nice, it was a happy family with many kids. As far as Dongho could remember, the house they were about to move into had been vacant since long time ago. Although it looked much bigger and luxurious than the Kang residence, nobody had bought it since after the old neighbors moved out.

Dongho suddenly remembered how back when he used to live in his parents house, he hated having his window directly facing the windows of that neighboring house. Even though the windows of the house across were dark, he somehow always felt as if someone was watching him. Of course, this would cause many fights to break out in-between him and his family, whenever they found him sitting in a dark room with the blinds closed in broad daylight.

That was perhaps one of many reasons why Dongho wanted to just move out and live in the big city of Seoul, where the lights would shine brighter than the stars at night.

“Dongho, go and help your new neighbors throw out their trash, will you?” His mother broke him out of his rush of nostalgia.

He pulled himself up from his warmed seat with an honest whine. Clearly Dongho wasn’t here to impress anyone like his mother had wanted, but his neighbors did seem like decent people that could always use some help. 

Up until now, he had never been inside of the neighboring house and it seemed so strange finally being able to see how it looked from inside. As a child he had always dreamed of sneaking just to check the place out, it was a silly idea, but to him this place once was like a mysterious castle fortress, haunted by many ghosts.

Looking back at it now, his childhood imagination was nothing, but just hopeful thinking. The place was just an ungraceful, abandoned and aging cottage with creaky floors and slight smell of mold coming off from somewhere in the walls. Each room of the house seemed small compared to his own height, somehow in his mind he had pictured the place looking bigger.

Some of the old furniture from the previous owners had remained, including old chairs and shelves that the new owners no longer had the room for, and without remorse were axed to pieces, instead of being deconstructed to save time on fitting them through doorframes.

Dongho was shown a hatch leading to the attic, the ladder had been too steep for anyone to navigate the useless items downstairs where they could be properly disposed of, so Dongho took on the hardest task of figuring it out himself.

The heavy attic door had already been opened for Dongho to climb up, yet the gush of a strong and unpleasant musky, damp smell was still unexpected, even more so, unwelcomed inside of his nostrils. The particles of dust danced in all directions illuminated by the rare rays of sun projecting through the large attic window covered up by a curtain of dust. Being in this attic for long was making Dongho want to sneeze. Practically every place imaginable, as long as it had a physical surface, had been draped with cobwebs and clumps of wool like dust.

Dongho blew his lungs out on a larger box before moving it away from being pressed up against a wall, this proved to be a fatal mistake, as it only made his sneezing situation worse. He opened the lid to the heavy container, only to find it all empty and absolutely nothing inside of value, other than bags of plastic crawling with spiders.

He gave pushing the box another try, and this time and it made an alarming sound of breaking wood below it. In fear, Dongho gritted his teeth, already afraid to look at the damage. If he had actually scratched up the floor of his parents new neighbors this way, then he’d definitely sneak out the other exit and schedule the quickest flight back to Seoul the next minute.

Luckily, the floor was unharmed, and had been the box that had suffered, but upon closer inspection, his eye had caught something else of interest. A dark hardcover book had somehow ended up forgotten behind the same box, getting lodged in-between it and the wall.

At first Dongho wanted to toss it out as he had done with any other piece of literature he had found downstairs earlier, as the new residents weren’t too fond of reading old abandoned books.

Yet, upon opening the his find, Dongho discovered that the book had been entirely hand written, each page covered with neat lines of text too proper to simply be some study text book. It was an old diary.

Even though this book now did not belong to anyone anymore, it still felt wrong for Dongho to stop to read it, but now he was having a hard time trying to decide whether or not to throw it out. Perhaps disposing of it was the best choice, because who ever had once written this, probably never intended for someone, years later from now, to snoop around their personal scribblings.

The short male was interrupted from his inner discussion, once hearing his neighbor call from below the steps, waiting for the box Dongho had been occupied with to finally come down. With the book pressed under his armpit, he left the attic, going down to help the family with other things downstairs.

He had almost forgotten that he was still holding it, until someone had asked him about the book in his hold. The mother seemed wise to tell him to either throw it out or just keep it, as she herself didn’t seem too thrilled in ever knowing about the history of the houses previous owners.

Out of options, Dongho just took the book to his own room fir now, laying it down by his bed. But it just sitting there all idle and seemingly harmless, made him unable to bring himself to ever toss it into the trash without reading at least a single page first.

He down sat on the edge of his bed contemplating about his find, perhaps the person who had once owned this was still out there somewhere going on with their new life, and exactly for that reason Dongho did not want to learn details about a life of some stranger whom he had never even met before.

But then he raised his next point, why would anyone leave their diary behind like this unless they purposely wanted for someone to find it.

Dongho had always done this tradition of whenever being inside of a bookstore, which quite was rarely, he’d flip open a fiction and read out the very last page, to see how the stories end without even actually reading the whole thing.

But this time he reconsidered going straight for the last page, as it wouldn’t make sense for a diary format, because once a diary is all filled up, usually the writer just keeps writing from where they left off in a new one.

As a clever compromise, instead Dongho split it open right in the middle. However in place of finding text describing ones daily activities, surprisingly he had found a poem. Dongho carefully flipped through the other pages and just like this one, many more of them were filled with similar short poems.

They were about the nature, the weather and other mundane things, however the neat choice of words made everything sound pretty. Some of the poems were sad, speaking of loneliness and dark sleepless nights, but even those always ended on a hopeful and positive note. Whoever wrote these was very talented, the way they had twisted their words sounded so lyrical.

Dongho flipped to the very first page, becoming more interested in the poet themselves. The first entry dated some years back, back when Dongho was still in high school. The book was quite thick with many pages, so he figured that maybe this thing had served its user for many years. Only one way to find out, he thought.

It was signed by a young boy named Hwang Minhyun, who had apologized for feeling obligated to introduce himself with his full name and age on the very first page, he wrote that it felt funny introducing himself in a book that only he would ever read.

Dongho wanted to shut the book closed right there of guilt for ever snooping inside of it, yet he could not stop his evil curiosity taking over him. He successfully convinced himself, that Minhyun would totally not be mad at him for ever reading the diary.

Minhyun claimed to be in his teens, and if Dongho had counted right, they should be the same exact age at the time of writing. The stranger described himself as a homebody and his pastime was reading books and singing along to words of the songs that he heard on the radio. If Minhyun had lived in that house, and his diary did not make it there by mistake, then that would explain all the heavy shelves of countless books.

Dongho kept on reading. Apparently over time Minhyun became obsessed with writing poetry, he even ambitiously wished to write his own book one day, and in a way, he did succeed his wish, as Dongho was currently holding one in his hands.

Minhyun wrote mundane things, like describe his room and what he saw looking out of his bedroom window. It gave Dongho small clues on whether the stranger had actually once lived in that house next doors or not. But even if he did, Dongho couldn’t think of a time he had ever met a boy his own age living around the area, let alone the big house next doors.

Dongho barely even remembered the people who once lived next to him back when he was younger, the family always kept to themselves and never really interacted with his own extravagant parents. However, besides the point, it seemed absurd that he had never even once seen a young boy walk out of that house even once, Dongho swore that he would have definitely noticed it.

This mystery was driving Dongho to dive deeper into the pages of the book to confirm his theories. But interrupted by the voice of his own mother calling him in a scolding voice, he had then unwillingly abandoned the book on his bed. 

Dongho was displeased of being forced away from reading the diary and to sit at a dinner table with his new neighbors to listen to their uninteresting conversations with his parents. All he had in mind was the diary.

The distant voices at the table suddenly bought up the talk about the previous owners, Dongho suddenly sharpened his ears.

The rare information confirmed his suspicion, the family who had once lived next doors was an elderly couple and their one son. They had lived in the house for over a decade, but one day they decided to pack and move to the city.

“How come I’ve never met their son?” Dongho blurted out of nowhere making everyone raise their eyebrows at him.

His parents shrugged their shoulders, nobody seemed to know much about their old neighbors, especially since it had been years since they’ve been gone. However, not knowing anything at all like this was nerve wracking, Dongho felt genuine worry for the writer of the book.

Dongho did not dare say a word about keeping the book, if they had known about it they would definitely toss it out, because of the way they were strongly against preying into the business of strangers. But Dongho wanted to keep reading, and nothing could stop him.

With a creak Dongho laid in his old childhood bed to read more of the book, he decided to read little by little, few pages before each night. This would perhaps give him some entertainment to pass his time here at his parents house, before eventually he would have to return to the big city he missed so much. Dongho intended to finish the book before his return, as he would probably not have the time to read through it back in Seoul.

Overtime Dongho had become pretty much emotionally invested in Minhyuns strange character, he was witty and corny, and he would overshare about absolutely anything. Sometimes the short male had to even skip a page where Minhyun had described in extreme detail his take on the verifying effects of climate change.

This kid truly loved nature, but he was never able to go outside and when he did it was only for a few moments, before he had to retreat indoors. Minhyun described being sick a lot, he was weak, had many allergies and a weak eyesight.

He often told that he feared losing his eyesight, because then he wouldn’t be able to view the distance through his only window to the world in his bedroom. According to Minhyuns desciption, it faced Donghos bedroom window, meaning that the boy living in that house had probably seen him at least once.

The possible mention of himself in Minhyuns diary made him all worked up. Dongho ran through the pages looking for it, until he would find something, Minhyun wrote:

“There is a family living across from my window, with two children my age. They cook barbeque on weekends.”

Dongho reached the end of the page, but there wasn’t any further mention, “That can’t be it.” He hopelessly flipped the same page back and forth looking for more lines.

At this point he did not know why he was so obsessed with the boy ever having seen him, or why he wished to confirm his existence in this boys life. Dongho did not want to skip to the last page without knowing the fact first, perhaps the two had met in early childhood, but Dongho had just forgotten. He tried to remember how the boy could of looked like, but he could not picture anyone in his head.

Dongho had abandoned his plans of heading out the next morning, instead the first thing he did after waking up was to continue reading from where he had previously left off.

Minhyun was older now, the mentions of his health worsening became more frequent, and he mentioned some illness that was affecting him, but he never mentioned it’s name, leaving Dongho clueless.

By how it appeared so many times in the diary, Dongho knew it wasn’t a flu or a fever, it had lasted for a long time, perhaps since the boy was an infant, and no matter how many pages Minhyun tried to fill up with stories about him wanting a puppy or at least a caged hamster for his next birthday, they were always interrupted by reports of him suddenly fainting and being taken to the doctors.

The scenes with mechanical beeping heard in the background became more frequent, Minhyun described that these beeps kept him awake and he had grown to hate them. From this point on, each time Dongho had to flip to next page he felt a painful lump collect at the back of his throat, he prayed that Minhyun had recovered just well.

However that was not the case. It had been a week in the hospital for Minhyun and he was now plagued with nightmares, he could not sleep. The only thing he could do was to hold his book and the pen, giving Dongho constant updates about his condition. They were all nearly organized, a whole page dedicated to his symptoms and short notes of how he was feeling that day.

The next morning Dongho had stopped reading. The book sat idle on his night stand, as he sat far from it at his desk void of motion. His fingers bought to his lips, silently trembling in place as he feared to imagine reading any more.

In the next page Dongho had opened, Minhyun said that he wished to die. Those were the only words on the page that day.

There were still more pages in the book, but Dongho was scared to count how many of them had actually been filled up, and it scared him like nothing else did in the world. Perhaps there was a lot more to read and such, but he could not bring himself to look into the diary any more, he had already read too much.

It’s not like him reading till the end could change anything that had already happened. He could not rewrite Minhyuns story into a better one and he hated it. Dongho just wanted for the stranger to be happy. And If he ever had the chance to meet him he’d make sure to tell him all of this.

Instead of agonizing, Dongho settled in his bed to face the wall, then after a failed attempt of falling asleep he rolled over on his other shoulder, then to sleep face down on the pillow, nothing would help. Minhyuns mundane poetry he had been reading for the past few days was now eating him alive.

Something made Dongho go mad that night, either the lack of sleep or just his brain overclocking from the horrible thoughts. He walked outside of his parents home in the pitch black of the night with just his bedroom slippers on, to dig through neighbors garbage.

Like a madman he just started collecting all of the books he could find, knowing they had once belonged to Minhyun, to save the artifact from being taken to a dumbster.

Dongho felt like he was in another dimension when actually finding books Minhyun had referenced in his diary. It was ghostly, holding the same items that Minhyun had once held.

As many books as he could carry, he took all of them to his room for safe keeping. He had no idea what to do with any of them, as it would be ridiculous for him to take all of these back to Seoul.

His hand ghosted over the hard covers of each book where Minhyun had most probably once placed his hands while reading, it gave Dongho strange comfort to pretend he was holding the boys hand in his. Minhyun had never stained a single page, but Dongho prayed for a finger print.

Donghos vision fell on a thick spiral bound book way larger than all others, his eyes almost popping out of his skull realizing it was a family photo album. He didn’t even leave room for consideration before yanking the album open to find at least one picture of Minhyun to prove his existence.

In a state of delirium, he skipped over many pages until he found Minhyun, a chubby cute baby wrapped in cloth sitting on his mothers lap. Minhyun and his parents seemed like a normal family, yet pictures of the son were more rare, he was always indoors.

He looked like a decent kid, his parents liked to photograph him quite a lot. As Minhyun grew older there were more and more pictures of him, until the album became filled with pictures of just Minhyun.

Dongho skipped ahead and found a wide family portrait covering the entire page, Minhyun was almost an adult, tall and handsome like his mom and dad. He was definitely much paler than them though, Dongho could tell that at the time of these being taken he was already sick.

But even though Minhyun looked ill and pale, Donghos eyes lit up seeing the mans face. In a weird way, he appeared to look like an angel to Dongho. A kind angel without his wings.

The photo album cut off before it could reach the current point in the diary. Even when Dongho went back outside to double check photo albums, that was all he could find, as it was probably the only one they had left behind.

It was a shame though, even if Minhyuns parents did have another album of Minhyuns childhood photos, many of these were precious and one of a kind baby pictures of their son. Perhaps once Dongho gets done with reading the diary, he could seek contact with them to return it to them.

Seeing Minhyun for the first time gave him a strong initiative to continue reading, Dongho was eager to find out what happens next. He knew Minhyun would certainly make it, the dude was already tough as nails.

Over a longer period of time, Dongho was becoming a better reader quickly going over sentence by sentence to catch up with what he had previously missed out on by skipping a day of reading. Minhyun seemed to do okay, he didn’t mention his current mood, but judging by his choice of words he was often annoyed and bored with nothing much to do at the hospital.

This is what caused the diary to flourish with poems, they gave Dongho hope, as they described happy and ponderous scenes, birds in flight, flowers in bloom. It seemed like it was finally looking up.

Minhyun was now finally out of the hospital after many months, but the news were nowhere near happy. He recalled how the doctor had told him scary words like, untreatable, end-stage, terminal. He wrote it all in scrambled angry writing, the ball of his pen almost embedding the words through the paper. Dongho was angry too, he wanted to find the bastard doctor that had told all of these filthy things to Minhyun and make the doctor apologize to him, for scaring the boy like this. Minhyun did not deserve this, he had done nothing wrong.

From that point on Minhyun was back to describing his bedroom and the things he saw out of his old bedroom window. He now mentioned beeping in his bedroom, Dongho knew Minhyun hated the beeping.

Donghos tired eyes suddenly jumped to the next string of words Minhyun had written down. He was describing one of his neighbors, a young boy living next doors, Minhyun thought his hair looked funny.

The short male raised his eyes from the diary remembering how in high school he had dyed his hair in a disgustingly bright orange color as a way to rebel against his parents and teachers. Dongho scratched his head thinking back in shame, he felt so embarrassed realizing that Minhyun had once seen him like that.

However it appeared Minhyun had taken interest in the boy with the odd hair color, he had nothing much else to do other than observing who ever walked by the house from his window, apparently this was because Minhyun could not go too far from the thing in his room that beeped.

Minhyun now referred Dongho to an orange fruit in his scribblings. Many times he even mocked him reporting, “The orange has deployed out of the house. Moving south-west, at fast speed.”

Dongho cursed at the pages, in disbelief that this punk had honestly thought he was being funny for making fun of his dumb hair. However, Dongho felt relief for unintentionally providing Minhyun some entertainment.

The writer of the diary had began to take notes on Dongho in a bird watching like manner, pointing out how he would leave for school early in the mornings and come back exhausted at the end of the same day.

He had even written about how Dongho had forgotten his book bag many times while running out late for class, and each time was carefully documented to ridicule his neighbor. At this part, Donghos hair had faded to dark, and once he came back home after a proper haircut Minhyun grieved by including odd mentions of oranges in his poems.

The time seemed to pass faster for Minhyun, it began to move in greater speeds in the diary as well. Even though Minhyun had never opened his window to talk to Dongho, he always spoke about him like they were close friends. With much consideration, the boy had decided that not ever talking to his neighbor was perhaps for the best, as Minhyun had been secretly watching the male for months, and revealing that fact to him would be just plain awkward.

The boy rarely mentioned his health anymore, but when he did it was never good. Minhyun suffered from migraines and had a hard time standing up from bed after laying down for a long time. Sometimes he could not wake from his bed at all. Over all, he just wished not to talk about it, not even to his diary. As he described it, if he could not make it go away, at least he wished to ignore it.

But to Donghos joy, Minhyuns awful doctor had been wrong, the young man was still actively updating the diary for months after coming out of the hospital. Those months soon turned into a year, and Minhyun had grown used to spend the day waiting for Dongho at his window.

The short male felt like he was in a weird state of realization. For such a long time he had been watched and adored by the boy in the window, and he had never known this fact.

Minhyun had seen the night Dongho sneaked back into his parents house late after drinking, he saw him celebrate his birthday with his friends, and saw Dongho trash his own room after a fight with his brother. He had twice seen Dongho getting kicked out of the house for getting horrific grades. And one day Dongho had even sat on his front porch and cried, because of a girl that broke his heart, Minhyun had seen it all too.

And eventually he saw Dongho graduate. The way he wrote about it in his diary made it sound like it was a bittersweet moment. Watching Dongho all dressed up in a nice suit, smiling outside of his house with his parents. Partially, Minhyun had felt like he had seen Dongho grow up with his own eyes.

But on the other hand he was a bit jealous of the life Dongho had. Minhyun wished he could graduate from high school along side of him, but he never got that chance. 

He had overheard Dongho boast about moving out from his parents house, and suddenly Minhyun had panicked. It reminded him of the unstoppable passing of time. 

Dongho didn’t understand what it meant when Minhyun would go on and on about days going by and the seasons changing in a flash. Minhyun seemed hung on the idea that he was running out of time.

After reading all of this Dongho realized he no longer just felt simply fond of the writer of the diary, the feeling was much greater than just that. He had fallen in love with the writer.

Dongho even wanted to scream at the diary to tell Minhyun how much he cares about him and that he doesn’t want him to be sad. He begged Minhyun to open the window and yell at his past self, as if he could change time. Dongho suddenly wanted to see him, he wanted to go out and find him to make sure he is fine. He promised himself he would find the boy, he could not sleep knowing he was out there.

The time for Dongho to return to his day job back in the city had finally come, but he had still not finished the book yet. The thinner it became the more hesitant he grew to read over the final last pages. 

Dongho carried another extra bag for the books he had picked up, unable to leave them behind. He looked at the quiet house for one last time before getting into the cab to the airport. His eyes set for Minhyuns old room window, now being redecorated from inside as the baby room for the children of the new residents.

It did feel strange leaving like this, it was almost as if he was saying his goodbyes. Minhyun had once lived in there, but clearly he had gone elsewhere. Perhaps now he lived in a neat apartment, with a good city view. Maybe he lived further out closer to the nature with many nice sighs and fresher air. Dongho concluded that Minhyun would’ve definitely liked the second.

The apartment Dongho owned in Seoul felt eerie and vacant after his long absence. It was if all this time his daily normal life had been silently waiting in the background, while he reminisced about his past. But somehow now his own room suddenly felt foreign for him, it was not like the one Minhyun had described him living in.

Dongho sat at the end of his bed burying his face in his hands before anxiously peeling apart the book where he had left his paper bookmark, both scared and content with what was possibly to come.

Minhyun was somewhat feeling better these days, his migraines had stopped and he could now seemingly walk for further distance. He could even freely move around the inside of his house without much struggle.

Dongho found himself smiling at the neat handwriting, it was a relief to hear that Minhyun had started to feel better over time. The man cheered at every one of Minhyuns victories even if they were the most minuscule things, like gaining weight or being able to stay up late at night without effort.

Minhyun made a list of movies to watch in the future now that he could access the living room TV again. He briefly mentioned Dongho in his future plans too, trying to guess what type of movies would the boy living next doors prefer to watch. It made the short male feel included, but sad at the same time, because not soon after this date he had moved out to collage, so Minhyun never got the chance to fulfill this wish.

Minhyun originally intended to finally muster up his courage and to ask to watch at least one movie with the boy next doors, and the current Dongho was still up for the idea.

But then, after flipping a page Donghos heart suddenly dropped. There was a big gap since the previous entry and the current one, and it was so unlike Minhyun, something had to gone wrong.

The boy had suddenly collapsed again, his state was rapidly worsening and it didn’t appear to have gotten any better by the time he was writing his next update. 

Dongho did not expect this at all right after Minhyun had seemingly gotten better. Again he was angry at the doctors, he wanted to scream, barely holding himself back from ripping out that very same page in distress.

His tortured eyes began to water. Dongho felt helpless, there was nothing he could do to help Minhyun and it broke his heart. 

But despite the grim turn of events, all of Minhyuns poems remained just as cheerful and uplifting as always. His hand writing had become shaky, getting worse and worse page by page. Even his usual long sentences had become desperate mess of words. 

But somehow, despite the sadness and grief in his written words, Minhyun sounded calm. Perhaps the boy knew that being terrified by the future was an useless fear, knowing that his days were becoming shorter, he had eventually stopped caring.

The final pages in Donghos hands had become even less, and now it had become painfully obvious that Minhyun had eventually lost the battle with his life long sickness. The boy was very clear with his words, as he described it, he did not have much left, and the doctors only gave him a little more than a week.

Minhyun was happy to be able to pass away peacefully at his own home, where he could sit until his last hour by his window like he always did, and watch Dongho leave his house for the one last time before he heads out into his new life. Minhyun wished him well, he wanted to say he was going to miss him and always remember him, but it seemed all too silly at this point.

Minhyun kept up with the tradition, bravely filling each last page with the usual scribblings and flowery poems until his body had finally succumbed to the illness.

On the very last page Dongho discovered the one last message the boy had left behind in this world. It was quite short and abrupt, but his final words still managed to leave another painful mark in Donghos already shattered heart.

Minhyun had inked his last regret, “I wish I had properly introduced myself to the boy living next doors. I seem to have fallen in love with him.”


End file.
